Alec Baldwin told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he “didn’t pull the trigger” during the fatal Rust shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull he trigger. Never,” the actor said in a clip from his first sit-down interview since the incident. Alec Baldwin Unscripted airs on Thursday on ABC and will stream afterwards on Hulu.
In the clip, Stephanopoulos points out that “it wasn’t in the script for the trigger to be pulled.” To which Baldwin responds that “the trigger wasn’t pulled.” He also tells Stephanopoulos that he has no idea how a live bullet arrived on the set. “Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” he added.
Asked by @GStephanopoulos how a real bullet got on the “Rust” set, Alec Baldwin says: “I have no idea. Someone put a live bullet in a gun. A bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property.”
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As Rolling Stone previously reported, according to search warrants, witness interviews have claimed armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed handed the Colt revolver in question to assistant director Dave Halls, who announced the weapon was “cold” (meaning not loaded), before passing it to Baldwin. On Tuesday, investigators issued a new search warrant probing a new theory about how a live round ended up in Baldwin’s prop gun.
Baldwin is now the subject of two lawsuits filed by crew members Serge Svetnoy and Mamie Mitchell, who were in a small wooden church on set at the time he fired the weapon. Both claim that he bore responsibility in the deadly accident because he pulled the trigger when it wasn’t called for after failing to check the weapon for live rounds himself.
“Guns are very simple, there are only two ways to shoot a bullet, pull the trigger or pull the hammer back and let it go. There are no magic bullets that fire themselves,” Gary Dordick, the attorney for Svetnoy, said in a statement to Rolling Stone in response to Baldwin’s claim he did not pull the trigger. “Either way the gun was in Mr. Baldwin’s hands when it discharged and he is responsible for the tragic events that followed. He had an obligation to check to make sure the gun was safe and he should have never pointed the gun toward Halyna Hutchins or Joel Souza.”
In the wake of the shooting, Baldwin has expressed shock and sadness at the death of Hutchins and is cooperating with the investigation, officials said.
The actor will discuss the shooting during his interview with Stephanopoulos, which will also be featured in a two-hour 20/20 examining “what went wrong” that airs on Friday.